NOVEL SIMPLE Ch.31: Smile Softly with Closed Eyes
I wasn’t really sure where the library was, so I tried to follow Mr. Minnow but he kept speed walking! It’s funny how someone with a eight foot height can cover three of my steps in one. Plus his faster pace, I might as well be trying jog instead of speed walking myself! It left me wondering how anyone can manage to keep up with different monsters’ physical abilities. Are humans and smaller monsters better in some other way? But then in what way?
Sighing to myself in frustration, I just widened my stance as I walked after him but it’s a little harder to do with these dino legs that bend backward at the knee. I’m supposed to lift the knee to walk but stretching out my leg too far like my original body almost made me fall forward. My body weight pushed my leg farther as if I was sliding on ice while my body started leaning to my left. Before I could reap my mistake, I felt a pair of hands pulling me to the right just enough that my tail would act as a counter balance, letting me quickly regain my balance.
“Whoa there. Are you alright? Didn’t hurt your leg?” Steph asked me with a serious face.
“Yeah… I wanted to see if I could keep up with Mr. Minnow, guess that was a mistake.” I said rubbing my neck and looking away from her. I wasn’t going to admit I didn’t know where the library was, that’ll just lead to a lot of invasive probing.
“I don’t think you’ll win any foot races with anyone with jumping legs.” Steph said pointing at my legs. I looked at my legs but then how did raptors run or other carnivorous dinosaurs run? “It’s best not to twist knots into your tail when it comes to different monster races.” Steph said as her tail swayed to left lazily.
“I uh, guess not. I’ll be more careful.” I said somewhat confused at her statement. I’d rather avoid twisting my tail into knots if I could help it. That’s when I realized that she managed to hold me up and didn’t seem tired out from it. Her arms didn’t look that thick, more like a regular girl’s skinny arms. Was there denser muscles under the hood or was this just a magic thing? But my own arms looked like an athlete’s arms, toned with decent muscle definition. I really don’t know how much of a difference there was but I kinda wanted to test it sometime.
We eventually made our way to the library? The whole wall was pink stone that had a light that would glow and dim. The doors were three times Mr. Minnow’s own height and look like a deep blue metal. After getting close to the doors to be hit by them, Mr. Minnow walked through them like passing through water. Was there some special entry or pass to go through? Everyone else was walking up to the doors and walking through them while talking to each other. Hoping for nothing to happen, I walking into the door and instantly I cringed. The door felt like goopy ooze, it reminded me of how spoiled milk became all clumpy, the door stuck to my body like a phlegmy membrane. Out of pure disgust I held my breath, no way was I letting this goo get into my mouth!
Now fully inside the door, I could see a pink honey like soup all around me, it bubbled in some places, I could even see some of my classmates moving through it in slow motion. All I could hear was a wet slurping sound that seemed to echo off the bubbles and even my classmates.
Hehehehehe
Out of nowhere a laugh came from behind me, I tried to turn my head but found that I kept moving forward. It was as if I had some input lag and my body just continued doing its set movement. I looked with my eyes to only spot an odd giant disc slowly coming into view. As it came closer I could see it had simple smiling face that a kid might’ve drawn, its eyes were locked on the closest people to it who didn’t seem to react. That’s when hands appeared around them and held them up to the smiling face as if it was examining a figurine for damages. Its smile never changed as it did this, it just looked at them before putting them down and slowly moving to the next closest to it and it was inching closer in my direction too!
I tried to struggle, charge my body with mana, swim with my wings, anything! No one else seemed to notice it but I didn’t want to wait to see what happened if it realized I was aware of it. But my body kept slowly moving forward, nothing seemed to change that’s when my mind started to get angry, it suddenly wanted to crush the disc. But still I didn’t move while the smiling disc moved closer to me until it was a few feet away from me, I could just barely make out its smile in the pink world as it towered over me. I could feel its eyes on me, I knew it could see every inch of my body, I could tell it wasn’t just in front of me. No, it was all around me, this whole pink world was its eyes, it already knew I was aware! Its smile suddenly widened to show realistic human teeth, it did this as if to confirm my thoughts. I could see its hands appearing from the pink void, slowly coming closer to me. Its fingers were inches away from me, I could feel the world feel hotter as they got closer but before it could grab me, the world split in half. All I could do was blink.
Opening my eyes I could see I was on the other side of th-
That’s when my head turned to look backwards and my wings shot opened and moved in cupping motions while my body warmed up. Then my arm made a fist and sent it forwards right as someone was starting to come through the door. Before my fist could go farther I grabbed my arm I quickly waddled over to a nearby counter and away from the door.
Leaning against the counter I tried to breathe and control my mana from charging my body further all while my mind was grumbling like a pissed of pitbull. Quickly I looked for anything shiny that wasn’t near the door, settling on a weird blue and purple glass lamp that had little orange crystals hanging from the edges. Focusing on it, I saw how the glass moved upwards similar to molten rock. The blue glass would push against the purple glass turning from a triangle to a square, both sides would push and change shapes on the lamp in a never ending battle.
“Excuse me Miss.” Came a relaxed voice while a white transparent hand waved in front of me.
I looked over to the hand’s owner to find half a woman floating behind the counter. Where her legs should’ve been were a collection of pointed diamond shaped glass or crystal, it looked almost like several shards of glass pieced together into a triple pointed dagger shape. It gave her the appearance of a dress, if the dress was actually part of her own body. Her hair was more diamond shaped glass of various sizes that floated above her head and arranged to look like breaded bun that was pointed. Her eyes were an icy silver that was outlined in ghostly blue and was paired with small circular glasses made of the same glass or crystal of her body.
“Did you need help with finding a book? Or was there another matter you wished to discuss? Perhaps one of noisy trouble makers? Ones that I could discipline in the ways of old book keeping maybe?” She asked. She leaned closer and sounded more excited after each question asked, her voice was oozing with excitement at the mere thought of disciplining someone. All while her face stayed in a small smile.
This lady was creeping me out so I said the first thing that came to mind. “Do you have a book on magic, uh, specifically on monster magic?” I blurted out in a panicked rush.
The crystal, glass lady leaned back while her smile remained the same as she lifted her wrist like she was looking at a watch. Suddenly a screen projected off her wrist and swiped left a couple times then up, followed by a vertical swipe. Her head turned to face me while she continued swiping in random directions. “Down hallway six, left into aisle four B near the back, pull on red book one and press the knot next to the book.” She said in a sweet tune. “Would you like me to call a page sprite to help you in this endeavor?” she asked leaning in close again, the angle made a shadow cast over her face making her small smile look wide and her eyes look a fiery blue.
“I think I can find it on my own. Thanks!” I said as I quickly backed away and rushed down the nearest hallway, deeper into the library.
Once I made my way out of the hallway, I was stunned by the sight of the library. it was set up like a layered ball! Each layer was its own row of four with shelves that went around the layer in a circle. Looking at it reminded me of towns and cities built on large hills or into mountain walls but each layer was probably its own level of books, maybe it was a whole floor. In the air floated seven strange pillars that was engraved with hundreds of glowing gems of red, pink and aqua. There appeared to be white lines moving up within the gems like the credits of a movie. It was so pretty that I focused on them, my eyes began to zoom in to find odd shapes in the gems. It looked like runes mixed with something similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs, there was runes that looked like wavy T’s or a spidery n while shapes that looked like vertical eyes and snakes twisted into the shape of a… dog? There was hund- maybe thousands of different lines of this text, all in one single gem.
Suddenly the gem I was looking at glowed pure white before an orb formed from the glowing gem, almost absorbing the glow. The orb floated in the air for a sort second before spinning and shooting off to a nearby wall. My eyes followed the orb as it flew towards a wall that had a star shaped gem in it which the orb promptly flew into. This made the star gem to flash as a small portion of it began to slide out of the wall until a book shelf planet like shapes on it sild out. The whole shelf then flashed blue and zoomed off into the library, it even went through some people like it was just a hologram. Looking back at the wall I saw another shelf zoom into place as a gray light before sliding into place and becoming a part of the wall but its gem was in the shape of a teddy bear?
I then noticed flying across the library were paper cranes and weird functional paper airplanes. The cranes flapped their wings and dive between shelves while the airplanes had working propellers and even a pilot in the cockpit who was also made of paper. I then saw a larger plane fly around the floating pillars before a black banner like hologram followed it. The banner had digital text that flowed out from where it connected to the plane which said, ‘Welcome to the Flowing Paper boc-hard’, the o in hord was crossed out and an a written above it as if someone edited the digital text by hand.
A few students that were watching began to laugh or giggle at the little edit but what got my attention was that all the students laughing were demons, there were oni, succubi and a few other demons too. Some were blood red with spiked ram horns and had super hero esque muscles, another was white and taller but only their forelimbs had any bulk and a group were a dark blue color and had large bug like eyes that looked like crystal. Their horns were curved and ended in a fuzzy ball, they also had mosquito like wings which would buzz every few seconds. They all were laughing but I wasn’t sure why they were and why were they all watching the plane? Were they aware of it before hand?
“My, my! It looks like some children have gotten into our mainframe.” Came a cold voice that made all the demons stop laughing but most still smiled defiantly.
Turning to see who spoke, I saw another half woman to my far right, she looked almost the same way the woman that desk looked like but her body was a green color. This glass crystal woman began rounding up anyone who happened to look at the banner. She even grabbed a small girl with hooved legs who happened to look at what the demons were laughing at. Realizing that I was also watching the plane I quickly scanned the floor I was on until I found aisle B and quickly made my way into it just avoiding the gaze of the green crystal woman as my tail disappeared behind the shelf. I quickly made my way to the back found a bright purple book that caught my attention. Was it a red book or a purple book?
“Who’s back here?” came the green woman’s deathly voice. “I promise to discipline you with
Less painful training if you give yourself up.” Called the voice. It tried to sound sweet but came off as sharp as a blade.
This spooked me into backing up until my back hit the wall, right as made contact, I felt sand? No maybe water? Looking to the wall I found a hallway of book shelves instead of a stone wall. Turning back I saw a wall instead of the shelves I was in originally, full of curiosity I moved my claw to poke the wall before.
“What an insult! If only I was faster, I could’ve caught the little rat!” raged my pursuer. I could still hear her on the other side of the wall and her voice sounded deathly, as if she would rip my heart out of my throat and turn me into a pair of shoes.
Turning around I found a ruby red book with the tile, “The human element”, on its spine. This got me curious about it so I pulled it off the shelf and found cover art of a golden bearded wizard in a tux with a wand and odd shapes floating around it. His face looked dignified as if he was actually a god, with piercing eyes and a solid frown, he was probably that rags to riches kind of guy. His no bullshit allowed face made me instantly open the book but instead of beginning at the first page I found that I opened to the middle of the book.
‘Welcome to my book on human magic.” Came a calm and deep voice. It was weird but I really liked the voice, it reminded me of a certain space laser blade wielding bad guy. And it was super cool! I wished I had a super deep voice like that, well yeah I kinda have a growl in my voice but I sounded more like a teasing older woman… why do I feel warmer down there?
‘What would you like to learn today, miss.’ Said the deep voice. Oh, I could listen to this cool voice all day! My back started to lightly zap me and something down below felt like it was tightening? What’s going on? Realizing my body was reacting on its own, I shook my head and tried to breathe.
“Uh… could you tell me a-about how human magic differs from monsters?” I asked while trying to focus.
The book began flipping to a different page that showed a wand and several gems. “As you can see, a wand and this crystal as the two of the most popular in spell casting. A wand is used to channel a human’s mana and hold it. Where a monster’s mana can freely move between their body and held outside of the body. A monster therefore is the wand, being able to freely control their mana into magic form.” Said the devilishly handsome voice. This made my wings start to twitch every time I felt a small zap in my back. Trying to focus so I could learn more from this very important book, I slapped my thigh with my tail to wake myself up.
‘Humans need to use this gathered mana to do magic but because magic is intent actualized, a human must first direct what they want to happen. That is why humans must direct how their mana must act and this can occur either in written form or as phrases.” Said the smooth and yet grizzled voice as the page flipped to a new image of things that looked like charms, phrases and blue bubbles. It was important that I finished this! I had- no needed to hear more! I tried to hit my thigh with my tail again but it began to press on my inner thigh making my thigh feel numb and tingly. Nothing will stop me from enjoying this book!
‘This begins to process of turning their mana into magic form which they can eventually send into the real world to act as its own element. All that’s left is to funnel the stored mana into the spell and aim at where you want the spell to take effect.” He said in such a sweet and loving voice that I couldn’t help be feel like he was whispering it into my ears. The thought sent shivers down my spine and my wing fully open and shake wildly. All while the tip of my tail was drawing circles into my thigh slowly inching closer upwards and sending happy jolts and zaps up my body.
At this point I couldn’t control my breathing as each breath was long and d-d-deep maybe it was shallow? All I knew was the buildup, the hunger- I needed to, to, uh…. My tail stopped rubbing my thigh making me whine in desperation. I needed to- had to come, come t-to a….. without much ceremony my tail slapped my groin making a loud slap and sending a piercing bolt through the core of my being and arching into my back while my tail tightened and wings spasmed.
“Ahh! Uhhhhhhh….” Came my shriek as something dropped from my hands
My body, m-my mousclesss were vibrat-vib, it felt goud…… sooo fuzzzzzzzy. The air fewls soo creamy. I need to….uh?
“Huh? What…. What happened?” I said as the white fuzziness faded from my mind. My body felt a lot looser and-! My eyes widened as I looked down at my groin. It was all sticky and something clung like glue to my- my v-vvvvvagi-
“Oh! Hey Oliver! I didn’t think I’d find you in here.” came a familiar voice.
